Robin Hood And Edward II The Nasty Piece Of Work

This will be my last post till 6 June or thereabouts, as I'm off on holiday. Yay!

Edward II good news: he now has 237 fans on Facebook, a number which creeps up by at least one or two people daily. Edward II bad news: I was deeply irritated by a very silly recent review of Seymour Phillips' new biography of the king, which calls Edward "a nasty piece of work" and makes more factual errors about him and his reign than I can shake a stick at. Writing about Edward's "grisly murder," saying that he "was also thought to have been a homosexual, who...was killed by a red-hot poker thrust into his anus" as though these are certain facts and claiming that Edward inherited a rich, peaceful country on the verge of 'annexing' Scotland in 1307 and left it impoverished twenty years later make it painfully, embarrassingly apparent that the reviewer has not read any recent, or even semi-recent, scholarship on the subject and is a long, long way from being even remotely knowledgeable about Edward II and his reign. (In fact, Edward I left his son £200,000 of debt in July 1307; Edward II left £60,000 in his treasury in November 1326.) No, I'm not linking to the review. Bleugh. Bad, horrid review.

But anyway, here's some more good news: Ian Mortimer's Medieval Intrigue is due out in early September, a collection of essays including several on Edward II. Woot! For more info, see Ian's website.

The new Robin Hood film with Russell Crowe has led to much online speculation about Robin's real identity, with many people expressing their belief that he lived during Edward II's reign rather than Richard I's. See here and here for more about this debate.
This forum thread - scroll down past all the arguing - puts forward the theory that Robin Hood "was contemporary with Edward II (and perhaps had to rebuff that monarch's homosexual advances)". This theory is developed at greater length here:

"We have seen that Edward was undoubtedly "gay" as it is called these days, and that in 1324 he was behaving very badly with the Despensers, pillaging the land and terrorising the population and more than likely sharing his bed with Hugh the Younger. We also know that he had a taste for the lower elements of the population, which had probably begun as a simple enjoyment of the Great Outdoors but by 1322 he is recorded as entertaining the likes of Wat Cowherd and other roughnecks, and paying them for their company! Could it be that, perish the thought, the king was casting a roving eye in Robin’s direction? Was Robin both afraid for his life from the jealous Hugh, and afraid too, for his honour! Was this the reason he asked the king if he could go back north on a pilgrimage to the church of St Mary Magdalene, and that once away from court, he refused to return to London? Or did he know, or suspect, that terrible events were just round the corner ? Whatever the cause of his defection, it must have incurred Edward’s wrath so much that Robin was re-outlawed as a result..."

OK, this theory is tongue in cheek and I don't want to be accused of lacking a sense of humour, but as Edward II's (self-appointed) Official Defender, I feel that this is putting 2 and 2 together to make 67. As I've pointed out before, Wat Cowherd and the other supposed 'roughnecks' like Simon and Robin Hod who have been named in print as Edward II's probable lovers (Edward quote was being promiscuous with low-born men unquote and paying them lots of money for their 'company', allegedly) were in fact members of his chamber staff who often appear in the king's accounts and were in close attendance on him for the last few years of his reign. There is nothing at all to suggest, absolutely no reason whatsoever to think, that Edward took these men as his lovers or that he ever hit on them, to use a modern idiom. I don't know why Robin Hood, a porter of the king's chamber, was sent away from court; some kind of misbehaviour, perhaps. The Household Ordinance of 1318 sets out misdemeanours for which the king's servants could be punished, which included taking bread, wine or food out of the household without permission, eating outside the hall without permission and riding a horse if below the rank of vallet de mestier. Wat Cowherd, far from being some roughneck paid for providing sexual services to the king for a couple of weeks in 1322, remained loyal to Edward to the very end: he was one of the men ('Walter Couhierd') pardoned in March 1327 for holding out at the late Hugh Despenser the Younger's stronghold of Caerphilly against the new regime. Other former members of Edward's chamber staff, such as Peter Bernard and Giles of Spain, joined the earl of Kent's conspiracy to rescue Edward from Corfe Castle in 1330, which demonstrates their loyalty to and affection for him, even two and a half years after his supposed death. There's nothing at all anywhere to suggest that Edward came on to his servants and ordered them away from court in a rage if they rejected him.

I feel that it's also worth stating here, for all the countless statements online and in books that Edward II was 'undoubtedly gay', for all the portrayals of him in fiction as a swishy, mincing, horrible stereotype of a gay man, what we actually know about Edward's sex life amounts to this:

- He had intercourse with Isabella of France four times, in or about February 1312, November 1315, September 1317 and October 1320, which resulted in their children.

- He once had intercourse with an unknown woman, sometime between about 1305 to 1308, which resulted in his illegitimate son Adam.

And that is it. Everything else is speculation. Whether Edward had sex with Piers Gaveston, Hugh Despenser or other men or women, whether his sexual preference was for men or women or both, whether he had an incestuous relationship with his niece Eleanor, how regularly or irregularly he had sex with his queen and how much he enjoyed it or didn't, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else, whatever they might claim to be 'fact' or 'undoubted truth'. (Yes, person on Facebook who stated as 'fact' that Edward "begat children on her [Isabella] - note not with her - as a painful duty," this means you too. You cannot know that.) Certainly Edward II loved Piers Gaveston, and most probably Hugh Despenser the Younger too. How he loved them...well, I'm sure everyone reading this will have their own opinion.

Lots more Edward II posts (and, according to this terrific post which I love every word of, an equal amount of 'excitable squee' about Edward loving Piers Gaveston 4eva!) to come in June. See you then, and take care.

Saint Thomas Of Lancaster

Further to my last few posts, here's one about the aftermath of Earl Thomas of Lancaster's execution on 22 March 1322. Miracles were being reported at the site of Thomas's execution and at his tomb within weeks of his death and were reported to Edward II at the parliament which began in York in late April 1322; here's how the extremely pro-Lancastrian author of the Brut chronicle reports them (the Brut is in English; I've modernised the spelling and quoted extensively as it's such a fascinating insight into the fourteenth-century mindset). "And soon after the good earl of Lancaster was martyred, a priest, that long time had been blind, dreamed in his sleeping that he should go to the hill that the good Earl Thomas of Lancaster was done to death, and he should have his sight again."

The priest had this dream for three consecutive nights, so made his way to the hill in Pontefract, and "devoutly he made there his prayer, and prayed God and Saint Thomas that he might have his sight again. And as he was in his prayers, he laid his hand upon the same place there the good man was martyred on; and a drop of dry blood and small sand cleaved on his hand, and therewith he rubbed his eyes, and anon, through the might of God and of St Thomas of Lancaster, he had his sight again, and thanked Almighty God and St Thomas. And when this miracle was made known among men, the people came thither on every side, and knelt, and made their prayers at his tomb that is in the Priory of Pontefract [Pountfrett], and prayed that holy martyr, of succour and of help, and God heard their prayer. Also there was a young child drowned in a well in the town of Pontefract, and was dead three days and three nights; and men came and laid the dead child upon St Thomas's tomb, the holy martyr; and the child arose there from death unto life, as many a man it saw; and also many people were out of their mind [miche peple wer' out of here mynde], and God hath sent them their mind again through virtue of that holy martyr. And also God hath given to cripples their going, and to the crooked their hands and their feet, and to the blind also their sight, and to many sick folk their health, that had diverse maladies, for the love of his good martyr."

The chronicler goes on: "Also there was a rich man in Condom in Gascony; and such a malady he had, that all his right side rotted, and fell away from him; and men might see his liver, and also his heart; and so he stank, that scarcely men might come near him. Wherefore his friends were for him full sorry. But at the last, as God wanted, they prayed to St Thomas of Lancaster, that he would pray to Almighty God for that prisoner, and promised to go to Pontefract for to do their pilgrimage. And the good man soon after slept full soft, and dreamed that the martyr St Thomas came unto him, and anointed all over his sick side. And therewith the good man awoke, and was all whole; and his flesh was restored again, that before was rotted and fell away; for which miracle the good man and his friends loved God and St Thomas evermore after. And this good man came into England and took with him four fellows, and came to Pontefract; and came to that holy martyr, and made their pilgrimage; but the good man that was sick came thither all naked, save his breeches; and when they had done, they turned home again into their country, and told of the miracle whereso that they came. And also two men have been healed there of their morimal [cancer or gangrene] through help of that holy martyr, though that evil be held incurable."

According to the Brut, when the two Hugh Despensers "heard that God wrought such miracles for his holy martyr, and they would not believe it in no manner wise, but said openly that it was great heresy, such virtue of him to believe." It goes on to say that Hugh the Younger sent a messenger to Edward II, who according to the chronicler was on pilgrimage, to inform him about the miracles. The story gets pretty disgusting: as Hugh's messenger passed through Pontefract, he "made his ordure" at the place where Thomas had been beheaded, and later suffered punishment for this sacrilegious act when a "strong flux" came upon him and he "shed all his bowels at his fundament," which prevented him reaching the king. [1] Lovely.

In 1323, 2000 people, some of them from as far away as Kent, gathered to pray and make oblations at Thomas of Lancaster's tomb. [2] Edward II, from Barnard Castle in early September 1323, ordered Richard Moseley, his clerk and the constable of Pontefract Castle, to "go in person to the place of execution of Thomas, late earl of Lancaster, and prohibit a multitude of malefactors and apostates from praying and making oblations there in memory of the said earl not to God but rather to idols, in contempt of the king and contrary to his former command." (Edward making his view of the situation pretty clear, there.) Feelings were running high: Moseley and his servants were assaulted, and two of them, Richard de Godeleye and Robert de la Hawe, were killed. [3] The archbishop of York, Edward II's friend and ally William Melton, twice had to remind his archdeacon that Thomas of Lancaster was not a canonised saint and order him to disperse the throng gathering at the earl's tomb, some of whom were crushed to death. [4] Several months earlier, in June 1323, Edward had been forced to order the bishop of London (Stephen Gravesend, another friend and ally of his; both Gravesend and William Melton joined the earl of Kent's plot to restore Edward in 1330) to prevent people praying and making offerings at a tablet in St Pauls "whereon are depicted statues, sculpture or images of diverse persons," Thomas of Lancaster's among them, "as the king learns with displeasure that many of the people go to the said tablet and worship it as a holy thing without the authority of the church of Rome, asserting that miracles are done there." The Croniques de London describes this object instead as a tablet which Thomas of Lancaster had had made to celebrate Edward's granting of the Ordinances in 1311. [5]

Thomas of Lancaster's cult grew in popularity at least in part as a reaction to the tyranny of Edward II and the Despensers' regime. One of the charges against Hugh Despenser the Younger in November 1326 declares that Hugh "had him [Thomas] falsely imprisoned and robbed, and in his own hall in his castle, by your royal power which you had seized from our lord the king, had him judged by a false record contrary to law and reason and Magna Carta and also without response, and you had him martyred and murdered by hard and piteous death...And because you knew that God made miracles by my good lord whom you murdered so cruelly against the law without cause, you, Hugh, as a false Christian, sent armed men into Holy Church and had the doors of monasteries shut down and closed so that no-one was bold enough to enter the Church and worship God or his saints." Whether, or to what extent, that latter statement is true, I'm not sure.

Thomas of Lancaster wasn't the only dead nobleman elevated to a heroic, saintly status in the 1320s. The great unpopularity of the Edward II/Despenser regime after the king's defeat over his enemies in 1322 meant that the Contrariants, who were, when all's said and done, little more than a bunch of treacherous, violent criminals, were praised and remembered with great affection because they were seen to have opposed the king and his favourites. Two Contrariants executed in March 1322 in Bristol were Henry de Montfort and Henry Wilington: in September 1323, miracles were also said to have taken place at their execution site. The mayor of Bristol told Edward that Montfort's brother Reginald bribed a ‘poor child’ of the city with two shillings "to pronounce to the people that he received healing of his sight." Men named William Cliff (presumably a different one to the man of this name arrested for aiding the earl of Kent in his 1330 plot to restore Edward II) and William and John Corteis "went there many times and preached to the people that miracles were done and forcibly maintained this, saying that without doubt the things done there were true." [6]

After Edward II's downfall in 1327, a campaign to canonise Thomas of Lancaster began in earnest. Edward's half-brother the earl of Kent - one of the men who condemned Thomas to death, and also one of the men who sat in judgement on the younger Despenser and accused him of murdering Thomas, hypocrisy which doesn't seem to have bothered anyone at the time - visited Pope John XXII in 1329 to ask him to canonise Thomas. (Kent seized the opportunity while at the Curia to ask the pope for his help in rescuing the supposedly dead Edward II from imprisonment.) A text written in Latin probably in the late 1320s laments Thomas as "the blessed martyr" and "flower of knights," and says "the pouring out of prayers to Thomas restores the sick to health; the pious earl comes immediately to the aid of those who are feeble." It begins "Rejoice, Thomas, the glory of chieftains, the light of Lancaster, who by thy death imitatest Thomas [Becket] of Canterbury, whose head was broken on account of the peace of the Church, and thine is cut off for the cause of the peace in England; be to us an affectionate guardian in every difficulty." The notion that Thomas was condemned to death unfairly and was a freedom fighter for the people of England against royal despotism also appears: "He is called Earl Thomas, of an illustrious race, he is condemned without cause, who was born of a royal bed. Who when he perceived that the whole commons were falling into wreck, did not shrink from dying for the right, in the fatal commerce...he is delivered to dire death, on account of which England mourns. Alas! he is beheaded for the aid of the commons...O Thomas, strenuous champion of plentiful charity, who didst combat for the law of England's liberty, intercede for our sins with the Father of Glory, that he may give us a place with the blessed in the heavenly court." [7] (One might suggest that if Thomas of Lancaster had in fact cared at all about the common people, he would have protested against the Contrariants' abuse of them in 1321/22 and tried to protect them rather than supporting and condoning it.) Although Thomas was never actually canonised, his hat and belt preserved at Pontefract were used as remedies in childbirth and for headaches as late as the Reformation. [8] Amazing...

Sources

1) The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, vol. 1, pp. 228-230.
2) J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, pp. 229-230.
3) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, pp. 528-529.
4) Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326, p. 153.
5) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 723; Flores Historiarum, ed. H. R. Luard, vol. 3, p. 213; Croniques de London depuis l’an 44 Hen III jusqu'à l'an 17 Edw III, ed. G. J. Aungier, p. 46.
6) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 543.
7) T. Wright, The Political Songs of England, pp. 268-272.
8) Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 329.

Update, Kind Of

Oh dear, I'm very lax about updating the blog these days! Apologies; I've been busy with (lots of, ack) dental appointments, teaching a seminar and various other things, and truth be told, am not feeling very inspired Edward II-wise at the moment. Merely a temporary state of affairs, I'm sure. My next post, on the aftermath of Thomas of Lancaster's execution in 1322 and his 'sainthood', is coming very soon. (I hope.)

I got an email a couple of days ago with some great news: a film about Edward II called Uncertain Proof is currently in production and is due for release in the spring of 2011. The film is set in 1340 and features Manuel Fieschi, the Italian cleric who wrote to Edward III in the 1330s to tell him that his father survived Berkeley Castle, as the main character, who investigates Edward II's true fate. To quote from the website, "the action covers just 24 hours but flashbacks portray Edward II’s life, his love of the joust, his supposed death and funeral, and the execution of his friend, Hugh Despenser." Yippee!!!! Can't wait! (Not entirely sure about that 'love of the joust', however; 'love of watching Piers Gaveston joust', maybe?)

There are a few historical novels I'm really looking forward to reading in the next few months: Susan Higginbotham's next one, of course, the excellently-titled The Queen of Last Hopes, about Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI. Sherry Jones' novel about the four sisters of Provence in the thirteenth century who all became queens, one of whom was Edward II's grandmother Eleanor. Sacred Treason, a thriller set in 1563, by James Forrester, better known as historian Ian Mortimer. Vanora Bennett's The People's Queen, about Edward III's mistress Alice Perrers (another novel about her, not long after Emma Campion's The King's Mistress; funny how you wait years for a novel about Alice Perrers then two come along within a few months). And Christy English's The Queen's Pawn, about Edward II's great-great-grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine and Alais of France, who should have been Eleanor's daughter-in-law and who was also Edward II's great-great-grandmother. (Alais, married Guillaume Talvas, count of Ponthieu -> Marie of Ponthieu, married Simon de Dammartin, count of Aumale -> Jeanne de Dammartin, countess of Ponthieu and Aumale, married Fernando III of Castile -> Eleanor of Castile, countess of Ponthieu, married Edward I -> Edward II.)

And to fill up this post, here are some blog search strings from the last day or two.

thomas boleyn pimp

red hot plumbing beeston

why did they torcher with hot poker during 15th century I love it that someone can't spell 'torture'.

means of death by inserting a sharp object into the anus up the spine

It wouldn't be my blog if I didn't get this search a few times a week: Did Willaim Wallace have an affair with issabel and William Wallace and Queen Isabella

eleanor of aquitaine's fornication with Henry's father

Two questions I can't answer: What happened in portugal in 1219?

Which Saints wore a purple robe encrusted in jewels?

mortimers living in Seend Wiltshire in 1700

the ordinance caused the great famine of 1315 Whatever Edward II may have thought, I'm sure it wasn't the 1311 Ordinance banishing Piers Gaveston that led to the Great Famine.

white battle north yorkshire 1322

Isabella of Castile facts: Her comparison. Google helpfully suggested Did you mean: Isabella of Castile facts: Hire comparison

Hope Keepers of Caernarfon Castle

leeds castle queen bedchamber initials on the cloths

How did Eduard ii was murdered

Edward II death homophobia poker

Eleanor de Clare sex

ordinances of 1311 early problems Gaveston`s exile The Lord Ordainers the ordinaries the aftermath

Proper post coming soon! Soonish anyway...

Thomas of Lancaster And His Relationship With Edward II (3)

The third and final part (part one, part two) of my post about Thomas, earl of Lancaster and his relationship with his first cousin Edward II. In late 1318, Thomas and Edward, to everyone's relief, finally came to terms with each other, and Thomas for once attended the parliament which opened in York on 6 May 1319. Later that year, he also co-operated with Edward during the siege of Berwick. Unfortunately, relations between the two most powerful men in the country deteriorated very quickly once more, and Edward II made it clear what was really on his mind by declaring "When this wretched business is over, we will turn our hands to other matters. For I have not forgotten the wrong that was done to my brother Piers." [1] He had never forgiven, and would never forgive, his cousin for Piers Gaveston's murder, and the king's new favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger, rightly or wrongly, blamed Thomas for the Scots' latest invasion of England: he told the sheriff of Glamorgan that "the Scots had entered his [Edward II's] land of England with the prompting and assistance of the earl of Lancaster. The earl acted in such a way that the king took himself off with all his army, to the great shame and damage of us all. Wherefore we very much doubt if matters will end so happily for our side as is necessary." [2] The Vita Edwardi Secundi says that Thomas blamed "Hugh [Despenser] for the disgrace which had attached to his name at Berwick, and this he wished to avenge as occasion offered," and the Bridlington chronicler claims that some people deliberately fostered dissent and conflict between Edward and Thomas at the time of the siege of Berwick, falsely reporting the king's words to the earl and vice versa. [3]


Thomas of Lancaster failed to attend the parliament of January 1320, which also took place in York. After parliament ended, Edward II and Isabella of France travelled through Pontefract on their way to London, and Thomas's retainers once again jeered at the king, and also the queen, from the safety of the castle. [4] Thomas also refused to attend the Westminster parliament of October 1320. The latest crisis of Edward's reign kicked off shortly after this parliament when the king seized the Gower peninsula and showed excessive favouritism towards Hugh Despenser. Edward seems to have been keen to mollify Thomas of Lancaster at this time, however, as he ordered that the Ordinances of 1311, to which Thomas was devoted, be carefully observed - but he also ordered Thomas to answer for the relief (inheritance tax, basically) on the lands he had inherited from his father-in-law the earl of Lincoln back in 1311, while pardoning Hugh Despenser from paying the relief on his wife Eleanor's inheritance. [5] A letter of 27 February 1321 told Edward II that the Marcher lords or at least some of them, furious with Despenser, had met Thomas of Lancaster five days earlier and decided to "raise disturbances and begin some mischief" in Wales, and that Edward should "command Despenser, the son, that he be prepared and arrayed in his lands that he may be able to counteract these evils." Thomas, always willing to support anyone against his detested cousin the king, was regarded by the Marchers as their leader, according to the Brut: they "came to the gentle earl of Lancaster, and asked him of counsel of the disease that was in the realm," meaning the Despensers. For obscure reasons, Thomas loathed Hugh Despenser the Elder, and wanted the Marchers to "not only rise against the son, but destroy the father along with him, because he had seen no opportunity for satisfying his longstanding hatred of the father." [6]


The Marchers began their attacks on the Despensers on 4 May 1321; according to the Flores Historiarum, the younger Despenser's men captured during the siege of Cardiff Castle were sent to Thomas of Lancaster. [7] On 28 June, Thomas met the Marchers, or some of them, at Sherburn near Pontefract, where an indenture was drawn up approving the actions against the Despensers. Thomas and his allies had hoped to attract the northern lords to their cause, but they were largely unsuccessful; the twenty-five men who put their seals to the document were mostly Thomas's own retainers. Subsequently, the Marchers, as per their name, marched towards London - helping themselves to food and provisions wherever they liked and generally creating havoc - to attend the parliament which was due to begin on 15 July and to demand the Despensers' exile. Thomas remained in the north at his favourite residence of Pontefract, as he usually did. [8]


Edward II's siege of Leeds Castle, which belonged to his turncoat steward Bartholomew Badlesmere, was a master-stroke in the king's campaign against his and the Despensers' enemies. Thomas of Lancaster played right into Edward's hands, as Edward and Hugh Despenser had no doubt predicted he would: he sent the Marchers a letter ordering them to not to aid Badlesmere, whom he detested [9], allowing Edward to pursue a policy of dividing and conquering his enemies. On 12 November 1321, Edward forbade Thomas, the earl of Hereford (Edward's brother-in-law and now his enemy) and more than 100 others from holding an assembly at Doncaster. Some of the men Edward ordered not to attend were his allies, such as his half-brother Norfolk, the earls of Arundel, Surrey, Atholl and Angus, his and Hugh Despenser's brother-in-law Ralph Monthermer, and Ralph Camoys, another of Despenser's brothers-in-law. [10] Thomas's attempts to win over men whose support he had no hope of gaining is a measure of the weakness of his position; the northern barons refused to aid him and go against the king. [11] Thomas and his Marcher allies, despite Edward’s prohibition, did meet on 29 November, though probably at Pontefract rather than Doncaster, where "they were sworn together a second time to maintain that which they had commenced." [12] The Anonimalle says that after the executions of the Leeds Castle garrison, the earl of Hereford and other barons saw that Edward was "a man without mercy," and suspected him – correctly, as it turned out – of wanting to destroy them as he had others. [13] Thomas of Lancaster and his allies drew up a petition (the famous Doncaster Petition) which accused Edward, among other things, of supporting Hugh Despenser in his piracy. They asked the king to respond by 20 December. Edward responded, surprisingly mildly, that imposing a deadline on him on to reform the affairs of his kingdom gave the impression that he was Thomas's subject, not vice versa. [14]

Edward II's campaign against the Marchers went well, and although the Marchers were desperately hoping for the earl of Lancaster's support, Thomas failed to come to their aid – although he had begun besieging the royal castle of Tickhill near Doncaster by 10 January 1322, presumably because its constable William Aune was Edward's spy in the north. [15] After the Mortimers, Lord Berkeley and Hugh Audley's father surrendered to the king, the remaining Contrariants fled to Yorkshire to seek refuge with Thomas, their last hope of defeating Edward. Thomas, using the conceited pseudonym 'King Arthur', wrote to Robert Bruce's adherent James Douglas to inform him that the earl of Hereford, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, Roger Clifford, Henry Tyes, Thomas Mauduit, John Wilington and even the hated Bartholomew Badlesmere had come to him at Pontefract. The men were, treasonably, prepared to treat with the Scots, as long as the Scots did what had previously been discussed: "to come to our aid, and to go with us in England and Wales" and "live and die with us in our quarrel." Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray and another close ally of Bruce, granted safe-conducts on 16 February 1322 for Roger Clifford, John Mowbray and forty horsemen to travel to Scotland. [16] Thomas of Lancaster had been suspected for some years of conspiring with the Scots; it was noticed that when their forces raided the north of England, they left his lands alone, and although Thomas had a great army at Pontefract, he did not attempt to pursue the Scottish raiders.

As yet unaware of these treacherous dealings, Edward II wrote to Thomas on 8 February 1322, stating that he "wished to continue and augment his affection to the earl" and ordering him not to adhere to the Contrariants, who "have publicly boasted that they were going to the earl, and that they would draw him to them in the aforesaid excesses, and that they were sure of this." Edward pointed out that joining the Contrariants would render Thomas guilty of treason. His cousin responded that he had drawn no rebels to himself, nor was he accustomed to nourish rebels, but if he knew where such were to be found, he would kill them or expel them from the country. Thomas's siege of Tickhill Castle gave Edward the excuse he needed to mount a campaign against his overbearing cousin, and on 13 February, he announced his intention of going to raise the siege. On 16 February, Edward asked his brother-in-law Charles IV of France - Thomas's uncle - to send men to help him fight Thomas and the Contrariants, and also asked his nephews the duke of Brabant and the count of Bar, his kinsmen the counts of Eu, St Pol, Aumale and Beaumont, Charles IV and Isabella's uncle the count of Valois, and the count of Hainault to send horsemen and footmen, and ordered Amaury de Craon, steward of Gascony, to come to him with armed men and advice. [17]

Edward captured Thomas's great Warwickshire stronghold of Kenilworth on 19 February. By 1 March, William Melton, archbishop of York, had discovered the treasonable correspondence between the earl of Lancaster and Scotland and sent it to Edward, who ordered him, the archbishop of Canterbury and all his sheriffs to make the letters public - a great public relations coup for the king. [18] Thomas and the earl of Hereford and their allies left Pontefract on 1 March, broke the siege of Tickhill, and took up position at Burton-on-Trent near Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, which belonged to Thomas. Edward seized his cousin's vast lands on 3 March.
Eight days later, on the advice of the earls of Kent, Pembroke, Arundel, Surrey, Richmond and Atholl, the king pronounced Thomas, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, Hereford, Lords Clifford and Mowbray and others to be traitors, and ordered all the sheriffs of England, the justice of Chester and the bishop of Durham to arrest them, saying that they "inflicted evil against the king’s servants, conducting war against the king with banners displayed." According to Edward, when Lancaster and the others saw that he was coming to Burton, "they turned their backs, set fire to the town, and fled." (The burning of the town is confirmed by the Flores and the Bridlington chronicler.) Edward appointed his half-brother the earl of Kent and nephew-in-law the earl of Surrey to arrest the main Contrariants and to besiege and take Thomas's castle of Pontefract. [19]

Some of the Contrariants decided that throwing themselves on Edward II's mercy would be a great idea. Thomas of Lancaster, however, believed that this was unnecessary and that his close kinship to the king would save him. After much debate, they decided to flee to Dunstanburgh, yet another of Thomas's great castles on the Northumbrian coast, where they could wait until the king’s anger against them had burnt itself out. Thomas at first refused, protesting that they would be seen as treacherously fleeing towards the Scots, but Lord Clifford's waving his sword in his face soon changed his mind, and they set off for the north. Queen Isabella, who remained in the south of England but loyally supported her husband, wrote to Andrew Harclay, sheriff of Cumberland and Simon Warde, sheriff of Yorkshire, ordering them to cut off the retreating rebels. [20] The Contrariants had only managed the thirty miles to Boroughbridge, where the Great North Road met the River Ure, when they found Harclay waiting for them, and were forced into battle on 16 March. (Boroughbridge had, perhaps ironically, once belonged to Piers Gaveston.) To cut a very long story short, the Contrariants lost the battle, the earl of Hereford died horribly and the great earl of Lancaster was taken by water via York to Pontefract Castle, his own favourite residence, whose constable had surrendered to Edward without a fight. Thomas was forced to wear garments of the striped cloth which the squires of his household wore, an intentional humiliation of a man of high birth and rank. On the way to York, a crowd of people threw snowballs at him, called him a traitor, and shouted "Now shall you have the reward that long time you have deserved!" [21]

Edward waited for his cousin at Pontefract, where rumour had it that the earl had built a tower in which to hold the king captive for the rest of his life; Thomas was imprisoned there instead. A triumphant Hugh Despenser the Younger, lately returned from exile and piracy, took the opportunity to hurl "malicious and contemptuous words" into Thomas's face on his arrival. [22] Thomas was put on trial in the great hall of his own castle, the justice Robert Malberthorpe, Edward, the Despensers, the earls of Kent, Pembroke, Richmond, Surrey, Arundel and the Scottish earls of Angus and Atholl sitting in judgement on him. Four of these men – Edward, Kent, Richmond and Pembroke – were Thomas's first cousins, while Surrey, Atholl and Angus had once served in his retinue. The result was a foregone conclusion, and Thomas was not allowed to speak in his own defence as his crimes were deemed 'notorious'. He exclaimed "This is a powerful court, and great in authority, where no answer is heard nor any excuse admitted," [23] but given that he had executed Piers Gaveston without a trial, he was hardly innocent on that score himself. The list of charges comprised the many grievances Edward managed to dredge up against his cousin, going back to Thomas's seizure of his possessions at Tynemouth in 1312 and including Thomas's jeering at him from the Pontefract battlements in 1317. Thomas was sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering, though Edward commuted the sentence to mere beheading.

Edward II arranged Thomas of Lancaster's execution as a parody of Piers' death. Rather than having him beheaded in the castle bailey, Edward had him taken outside to a small hill, mirroring Piers' 1312 death on Blacklow Hill. Thomas was forced to ride "some worthless mule" and "an old chaplet, rent and torn, that was not worth a half-penny," was set on his head. A crowd of spectators again threw snowballs at him. Presumably at the king's order, Thomas was forced to kneel facing towards Scotland, in a pointed reminder of his treasonous correspondence with Robert Bruce, and "beheaded like any thief or vilest rascal" with two or three strokes of the axe. (Actually, beheading was a nobleman's death, a privilege of high rank; common criminals were hanged.) The parallels between the deaths of Piers and Thomas did not unnoticed: "he was neither drawn nor hanged, only beheaded in like manner as this same Earl Thomas had caused Piers de Gaveston to be beheaded," says Lanercost, Anonimalle draws a similar comparison, and the Brut says "the cursed Gascon" had brought Thomas to this predicament. The Vita agrees, saying "the earl of Lancaster once cut off Piers Gaveston’s head, and now by the king’s command the earl himself has lost his head. Thus, perhaps not unjustly, the earl received measure for measure, as it is written in Holy Scripture." The Scalacronica also makes the connection between the deaths of Thomas and Piers, and says that Thomas was executed "for other offences which he had often and habitually committed against the king, and at the very place where he had once hooted, and made others hoot, at the king as he [Edward] was travelling to York." [24]

And so passed Thomas of Lancaster, earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Salisbury, steward of England, grandson and nephew of kings of England, brother-in-law and uncles of kings of France. Not counting Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, Thomas was the first English earl executed since Waltheof in 1076, though Edward I in November 1306 had the Scottish earl of Atholl, his close kinsman (Atholl was a descendant of Edward's grandfather King John) hanged on a high gallows in London. Whatever some of Thomas's contemporaries may have thought of him - the extremely pro-Lancastrian Brut called him the 'gentle earl', for example - it's hard to find a modern historian with a good word to say about him, and hard, for me at least, to find much sympathy for a man who did his utmost to thwart his cousin Edward II at every turn.

Sources

1) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 104.
2) J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, p. 249.
3) Vita, p. 109; Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 2, p. 57.
4) J.R.S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II, p. 189.
5) Phillips, Valence, pp. 196-198.
6) Letter of 27 Feb 1321: J. Goronwy Edwards, ed., Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, pp. 180-181. The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F.W.D. Brie, p. 213. Despenser quotation: Vita, p. 111.
7) Flores Historiarum, ed. H.T. Riley, vol. 3, p. 346.
8) Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 273-274; Phillips, Valence, pp. 206-207; Bertie Wilkinson, 'The Sherburn Indenture and the Attack on the Despensers', English Historical Review, 63 (1948), pp. 4, 6; Flores, p. 197; Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, pp. 107-108.
9) The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307-41, from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, p. 102.
10) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 505-506.
11) Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 300.
12) Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. John Glover, p. 339.
13) Anonimalle, p. 104.
14) Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 304.
15) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-1324, p. 47; Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 306.
16) Close Rolls 1318-1323, 525-526; Foedera 1307-1327, p. 474, and see also pp. 459, 463, 472.
17) Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 515-516, 521-522; Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 307.
18) Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 525-526.
19) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 100; Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 522; Gesta Edwardi, p. 75; Flores, p. 346; Patent Rolls 1321-1324, p. 81.
20) Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 310; Brut, p. 217; Flores, p. 346.
21) Brut, pp. 216-221.
22) Vita, p. 125; Anonimalle, p. 106.
23) Vita, p. 126.
24) Brut, p. 222; The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 234; Vita, p.126; Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III as Recorded by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, knight, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 67, etc.

Thomas of Lancaster And His Relationship With Edward II (2)

I'm sure you know what today is: Edward II's 726th birthday. Yes, my favourite king was born in Caernarfon on 25 April 1284. Hearty congratulations, Sire! Today, the second part (here's the first part) of my post about Edward's relationship with his first cousin and greatest enemy, formerly his ally, Earl Thomas of Lancaster. I've figured out that there are going to have to be three parts; there's an awful lot I want to say about these two men.

Edward and Thomas's relationship hit a low point in the summer of 1316: the two men met and had a furious row in York, and although Thomas was chosen as one of the godfathers of Edward and Isabella of France's second son John of Eltham, Thomas's great-nephew, he failed to attend the boy's christening, a gross insult to the king and queen. (I can't help wondering if Edward - criticised then and now for his closeness to his male favourites - felt a tad smug that he had fathered two legitimate sons while Thomas, in his late thirties in 1316 and a man who supposedly "defouled a great multitude of women," had none?) The author of the Flores Historiarum, whom I always think of as Not Edward II's Greatest Fan, claims that Edward armed himself against his cousin and that his fear of Thomas was the reason for his cancellation of the Scottish campaign that was meant to take place that summer. [1] Whether that's true or not, Edward was concerned enough about Thomas's hostility to summon Isabella to him in York after John of Eltham's birth, fearing for her safety. The queen travelled very fast: on 22 September 1316 she was at Buntingford in Hertfordshire, 175 miles from York, and must have been reunited with Edward soon after the 27th, as on that date, the king paid her messenger William Galayn a pound for informing him of her imminent arrival. [2]

In the spring of 1317 came the abduction - or whatever it was - of Thomas of Lancaster's wife Alice de Lacy from Canford in Dorset by household knights of John de Warenne, earl of Surrey. Rightly or wrongly, Thomas blamed Edward II and the three knights then high in the king's favour, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and William Montacute. Whatever the truth of Thomas's allegations, it seems clear that Damory, Audley and Montacute were doing their best to hinder any reconciliation between the king and the earl, and at a meeting of the king's council at Clarendon in the spring of 1317, the three openly called Thomas a traitor. [3] Thomas sent letters to Edward to say that "he fears the deadly stratagems of certain persons who thrive under the protection of the royal court…they have already carried off the earl’s wife to his disgrace and shame." [4] Thomas asked Edward to expel the earl of Surrey, Damory, Audley and Montacute from court, and demanded "such satisfaction as he can get for the wrong done to him." He wrote to Edward to complain that his companions were "not suitable to stay beside you or in your service…but you have held them dearer than they ever were before...every day you give them of your substance, so that little or nothing remains to you." [5] To be fair, he did have a point: Damory, Audley and Montacute had no intention of allowing Lancaster to reduce their vast influence over Edward and therefore counselled the king to remain hostile to his cousin and "intrigued against the earl as best they could." The Flores calls them "men who stir up discord and many problems for the kingdom daily attending the lord king, continually supporting his arrogance and lawless designs." [6] Pope John XXII tried to heal the breach between the king and his cousin in 1317 and 1318, begging Edward not to allow any "backbiter or malicious flatterer" to bring about disunity between himself and Thomas, and to send away from court those men who offended the earl. The pope also asked Thomas to "separate himself" from those who displeased Edward and to reject "suggestions of whisperers and double-tongued men." [7]

Edward asked his household and friends for advice about his cousin: "You see how the earl of Lancaster has not come to parliament. You see how he scorns to obey our commands. How does it seem to you?" Some replied "Let the king pursue and take his despiser, and when he is taken put him in prison or exile him." Others responded "It is no small matter to take the earl of Lancaster. The Scots will support him, and a great part of Wales; it is better to proceed another way, and treat beforehand of a form of agreement." [8] In the interests of trying to preserve the fragile peace, Edward summoned a council meeting to Westminster for 15 April 1317, inviting Lancaster and his confidant, Sir Robert Holland. However, the two men failed to turn up, and Edward himself arrived three days late, which hardly implies any great enthusiasm on his part to meet his cousin. He did send envoys to Thomas on 21 April and 29 May, probably at the urging of his more moderate counsellors – but to no avail. [9] Edward or his advisers made another attempt to meet and come to terms with Lancaster, and he and members of Edward’s council were summoned to a meeting to begin at Nottingham on 18 July 1317. [10] Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and William Montacute were not summoned, but attended anyway. Edward arrived at Nottingham on 16 July and stayed there for three weeks, but once again, Thomas failed to turn up. On the 21st, Edward sent him a letter, repeating the summons and remonstrating with him for holding private assemblies and for employing an unusual number of armed retainers, "whence the people are considerably frightened." Thomas in turn accused Edward of failing to obey the Ordinances of 1311, as he often did, and of keeping people at court who should have been removed and bestowing lavish gifts on them. [11] He refused to meet Edward unless Damory, Audley, Montacute and the earl of Surrey left court, and Edward refused once again to send them away. It seemed that the two men would never be reconciled. Lancaster spent most of his time at his favourite residence of Pontefract and was by now almost completely isolated politically, but far too powerful for Edward to ignore, thanks to his vast wealth and his five earldoms; "By the size of his patrimony you may assess his influence," comments the Vita Edwardi Secundi.

Edward and Isabella left Nottingham and the failed council meeting on 7 August 1317, and travelled to York. The king was forced to stay as far to the east of Pontefract, Thomas's stronghold, as possible: the most direct route would have taken him right through the town, but Thomas had blocked his way by placing armed guards on the roads and bridges south of York. [12] Edward was, understandably, furious that one of his subjects would dare to impede his progress through his own kingdom, and brought it up four and a half years later as one of the charges against Thomas at his trial. [13] Before Edward’s arrival in York, he did, however, send envoys to Pontefract to negotiate with Thomas, to try to make peace so that the latest planned Scottish campaign could proceed. The envoys included the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, five bishops, and the earls of Pembroke and Hereford, their aim to persuade the king and the earl to meet face-to-face and resolve their difficulties; "a love-day without the clash of arms," as the Vita puts it. Unfortunately, Thomas claimed to have heard a rumour that if he came to Edward’s presence, the king would "either have his head or consign him to prison," and, whether that was true or not, refused to meet Edward. Thomas also accused Roger Damory and William Montacute of trying to kill him, and claimed to have intercepted letters from Edward II to Scotland, inviting the Scots to help kill him. [14]

Fortunately, however, at the instigation of two cardinals who had recently arrived in the country – they were with the king at York in September 1318 – a date was finally set for a meeting between Edward and Thomas, although it was postponed. For now, at least, Edward agreed to take no hostile action against Thomas and his adherents, and Thomas agreed to attend the next parliament, due to be held at Lincoln in January 1318. On 26 September 1317, Edward granted a safe-conduct for "our dear and faithful cousin" Thomas, and his adherents, to travel to Lincoln the following January. [15] Finally, Edward dismissed most of his soldiers, Thomas removed his guards from the roads and bridges south of York, and at the beginning of October 1317, Edward left York to return to London. The road through Pontefract was now clear, but instead of doing the sensible thing and ignoring Thomas, Edward took it into his head, despite his promise a few days earlier not to take action against his cousin, to command his men to take up arms and attack him. Apparently one of Edward’s friends – most likely Roger Damory – had persuaded him, in his own selfish interests, that the earl posed a threat to Edward and that he should attack him first. Fortunately for the stability of his kingdom, Edward, who was incapable of distinguishing between good and bad advice and who tended to believe and act on whatever the last person had told him, informed the earl of Pembroke beforehand what he was intending to do. He said "I have been told that the earl of Lancaster is lying in ambush, and is diligently preparing to catch us all by surprise." [16] Pembroke fortunately still retained some influence over the king and managed to convince Edward that this was not in fact the case, and the party returned to London with no further incidents – despite the fact that Thomas did his utmost to make matters worse by leading his men out to the top of the castle ditch and jeering at Edward as he and his retinue travelled past. [17] Edward was naturally incensed at this appalling rudeness, and he was not the kind of man to forgive and forget an insult; in March 1322, it was another of the charges he raised against Thomas at his trial.

In early October 1317, Thomas seized Knaresborough Castle in Yorkshire, which his retainer John Lilburn didn’t surrender to the king until January 1318, and by the beginning of November had also forcibly gained possession of Alton Castle in Staffordshire. Knaresborough had formerly belonged to Piers Gaveston, Alton to Theobald Verdon, but far more importantly as far Thomas was concerned, Roger Damory was the custodian of both. Edward ineffectually sent out orders to various sheriffs to retake the castles and commanded Thomas to "desist completely from these proceedings." Not only did Thomas fail to obey, he "with a multitude of armed men, besieged and captured diverse castles" in Yorkshire which belonged to the earl of Surrey: Sandal, Conisborough and Wakefield. Thomas also ejected Maud Nerford, Surrey's mistress, from her property in Wakefield, and by the beginning of 1318 had taken firm control over Surrey's Yorkshire lands. [18] In an attempt to placate his cousin and persuade him to give the castles back, Edward told him "the king is prepared to do justice in his court concerning the things that the earl has to prosecute" against Edward’s friends, and paid Alexander Bicknor, the English archbishop of Dublin, forty pounds for travelling to Pontefract to talk to Lancaster. [19] The conflict between Surrey and Thomas continued unabated in 1318: Thomas now turned his attention to Surrey’s lands in Shropshire and Wales, and Edward issued an order forbidding "his attempting anything in breach of the king’s peace." In July 1318, Edward summoned a meeting of his great council at Northampton, and he and Isabella left Woodstock to travel there on 27 June, only nine days after she had given birth to their daughter, Eleanor. Thomas of Lancaster did not attend the meeting, and the Vita says that the earl of Surrey, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, William Montacute and both Hugh Despensers arrived at Northampton "in great strength, so that you would have thought they had not come to parliament, but to battle." The author gives this as the reason for Thomas's non-attendance, as "he counted all the aforenamed as his deadly enemies." [20]

Since April 1318, a group of barons and prelates had been negotiating with the earl of Lancaster, and trying to persuade Edward and his cousin to overcome their hostility to each other. On 8 June, they came to a preliminary agreement: Edward would uphold the hated Ordinances, govern by the counsel of his magnates, and conciliate Thomas, who was threatened with sanctions if he continued to hold armed assemblies. Thomas's violence and lawlessness were thus condoned, as he was too powerful for the king to ignore and his co-operation with Edward was essential if England was ever to find peace. Although Thomas declared that he did not trust Edward’s safe-conducts, he did eventually consent to meet the king, and on 7 August 1318 the two men exchanged the kiss of peace in a field between Loughborough and Leicester. Edward gave his cousin a fine palfrey "in recognition of his great love" of Thomas. (Hmmmm.) A formal agreement, the Treaty of Leake, was signed in the town of Leake near Loughborough two days later. [21]

So by late 1318, the relationship between Edward II and the earl of Lancaster was about as good as anyone could have hoped for, and in September 1319 Thomas actually co-operated with the king and took part in the siege of Berwick. But the actions of Edward's latest and most powerful favourite were soon to cause the relationship to deteriorate once more, and this time, it would result in execution...Coming soon!

Sources

1) Flores Historiarum, vol. III, ed H. T. Riley, pp. 176-177.
2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, p. 621; Thomas Stapleton, 'A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth years of King Edward the Second', Archaeologia, 26 (1836), p. 320.
3) Flores, p. 178; J.R.S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II, p. 119.
4) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 80.
5) G.O. Sayles, The Functions of the Medieval Parliament, pp. 336-337.
6) Vita, p. 87; Flores, pp. 176-177.
7) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, pp. 415, 431, 434, 438-439, 444.
8) Vita, pp. 80-81.
9) Phillips, Valence, pp. 119-120.

10) Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 482; Foedera 1307-1327, p. 335.

11) Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 2, pp. 50-52; Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, pp. 271-276.

12) Phillips, Valence, p. 125.

13) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 479.

14) Vita, p. 81; Phillips, Valence, p. 131; J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, p. 224.

15) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 343.

16) Vita, pp. 81-82.

17) Flores, pp. 180-181; Maddicott, Lancaster, p. 210.
18) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, pp. 346-347; Foedera 1307-1327, pp. 345-346; Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 575.
19) Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 575; Stapleton, 'Brief Summary', p. 332.
20) Vita, p. 87.

21) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 370; Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp.112-114; Maddicott, Lancaster, pp. 213-229; Phillips, Valence, pp. 136-177; R.M. Haines, King Edward II, pp. 109-117.

(I have no idea why Blogger has decided to put random spaces in my notes. Stupid thing.)

Thomas Of Lancaster And His Relationship With Edward II (1)

A post about one of the most important men of Edward II's era, the king's first cousin Thomas of Lancaster, earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Salisbury and steward of England. Because there's just so much one could write about Thomas, this post focuses on things that I personally find interesting about him and his life, and his relationship with Edward II.

Thomas was probably born around 1278 or 1279 - so was about five or six years older than Edward II - as the eldest son of Edmund of Lancaster (1245-1296) and Blanche of Artois (c. 1245/48-1302). Edmund of Lancaster was the younger son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence and thus the brother of Edward I; Blanche was the niece of Louis IX of France and the widow of Enrique I 'the Fat', king of Navarre and count of Champagne and Brie. By Enrique, Blanche had one surviving child, Jeanne or Juana, queen of Navarre in her own right and queen of France by marriage to Philip IV. Blanche was thus the grandmother of Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Edward II's queen Isabella, and was also Edward's aunt by marriage.

When they were growing up, Thomas of Lancaster and his younger brother Henry (born c. 1281, married Maud Chaworth) were nephews of the king of England and brothers-in-law of the king of France, and in adulthood were first cousins of the king of England and (half-) uncles of three kings of France and the queen of England, so were extremely high-born and well-connected. (The fact that Thomas was Isabella of France's uncle has been missed by a surprisingly large number of writers, including a PhD thesis about Isabella and a couple of novelists who have written him as being in love with her.) Thomas and Henry had another brother, John, who spent most of his life in France and died childless in 1317 - Henry inherited his lands, which included Beaufort and ultimately passed to Henry's grandson-in-law John of Gaunt - and a sister, Mary, who died in infancy. Perhaps surprisingly, Thomas of Lancaster's childhood is very obscure; his date of birth can't even be narrowed down to a year, let alone a specific date. His father Earl Edmund died in June 1296 when Thomas was probably about seventeen or eighteen, and his uncle Edward I granted him his lands and earldoms in 1298, although he was still underage. Thomas's paternal grandmother Eleanor of Provence, widow of Henry III and of course also Edward II's grandmother, made him her heir to her claim to her father's county of Provence in May 1286, to revert to his brothers Henry and John if Thomas died childless. [1] Edward II, as heir of their grandmother's sister Sanchia, queen of Germany and countess of Cornwall, tried unsuccesfully to claim a share of Provence from his kinsman Robert, king of Sicily and count of Provence, in 1323; Thomas had also put forward a claim, and was rebuked by Pope John XXII in early 1322 for failing to speak courteously enough of Robert of Sicily. [2]

Edward I arranged a marriage for his nephew in August 1290, when Thomas was about eleven or twelve: the king and Philip IV of France confirmed an agreement that Thomas would marry Beatrice, daughter of Hugh, viscount of Avallon (1260-1288), eldest son of Hugh IV, duke of Burgundy by his second wife Beatrice, sister of King Enrique I of Navarre. [3] Little Beatrice was born in 1281, and the wedding plans fell through when she died suddenly in 1291. The following year, Thomas was betrothed to Alice de Lacy, who inherited the earldom of Lincoln from her father Henry and the earldom of Salisbury from her mother Margaret Longespee, and they married in October 1294 when Alice was twelve going on thirteen and Thomas fifteen or sixteen. Marriage to Beatrice would have provided Thomas with an annual income of £4500; marriage to Alice de Lacy gave him about 10,000 marks (£6666) per annum, and he got two more English earldoms (on top of the three, Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, he inherited from his father) into the bargain. Unfortunately, it proved to be a disastrous, and childless, match, and Alice left Thomas in 1317. Thomas, however, was certainly not bereft of female company and fathered at least two illegitimate sons, Thomas and John: John is mentioned in papal letters and various other sources as a Master of Arts, a 'scholar of theology' and a canon of Lincoln and Uttoxeter, and Thomas was a knight who requested permission in 1354 to become a Friar Minor. It's interesting that Earl Thomas must have fathered John on one of his second cousins, as a papal letter of 1349 describes John as "the son of a a married man and a spinster related in the third degree of kindred." [4] I would speculate that Thomas's unknown mistress must have been illegitimate or descended from an illegitimate line, as Thomas's legitimate second cousins were too high-born to be his mistresses, at least without anyone noticing. John was still alive in 1369, forty-seven years after his father's execution.

Edward of Caernarfon and Thomas of Lancaster were apparently on very good terms before Edward's accession. In 1305, Thomas was forced to apologise to Edward for being unable to come and attend him, as he was ill. Edward wrote back to say that he hoped to visit Thomas soon, "to see and to comfort you." [5] This closeness continued after Edward became king of England in July 1307, a fact missed by many novelists, who assume that the two men were even then at loggerheads and that Thomas was always his cousin's enemy. In fact, Thomas was in almost constant attendance on Edward for the first sixteen months or so of his reign, and he was one of only a handful of men, who included the king's and Thomas's first cousin the earl of Richmond, Hugh Despenser the Elder and his retainer Sir John Haudlo, who remained loyal to Edward II in the spring of 1308 when the majority of the barons were pressing for Piers Gaveston's exile.
In November 1308, however, Thomas appears to have abruptly left court; he witnessed no more charters after this date until March 1310, and the constant flow of grants and favours to him from Edward also ceased. [6] There is no evidence of an argument between the king and his powerful cousin in any chronicle, but for some reason Thomas, who had previously been on amicable terms with Piers Gaveston, became implacably opposed to Piers' return from Ireland, and when Thomas and the earls of Pembroke, Warwick and Hereford visited Edward at Kennington in May 1309, they asked for safe-conducts, which were guaranteed by the earls of Lincoln, Richmond, Gloucester and Arundel - evidence of how little Thomas now trusted the king. [7] The cause of the rift between king and earl remains unknown - the Vita Edwardi Secundi says that "one of his [Thomas's] household had been thrown out of office at Piers' instance," and Andy King plausibly speculates that this is a reference to the Yorkshire knight Gerald Salveyn [8] - but the hostility between the two richest and most powerful men in the country was to dominate English political life until 1322. As Dr King points out, "both men seem to have been particularly stubborn" and a minor disagreement might well have been blown up out of all proportion with neither man prepared to back down and offer an olive branch. Edward II and his cousin seem to have been very similar in a number of ways, neither of them willing to set aside personal likes and dislikes in the interests of policy.

At any rate, Thomas slowly moved into the position of the king's enemy, which he would hold until his death. In February 1311, his father-in-law Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, died, and Thomas inherited his lands by right of his wife Alice. He had to perform homage to Edward II for the lands, but Edward was then on campaign in Scotland. Thomas refused to cross the Tweed to meet the king; Edward refused to return to England. According to the Lanercost chronicle, Thomas threatened to forcibly enter his lands with a hundred knights, at which Edward gave in and met Thomas at Haggerston, on the English side of the river Tweed. Whatever they felt for each other by then, the men at least managed to conceal any hostility and "saluted each other amicably and exchanged frequent kisses." [9] In the autumn of 1311, Thomas was one of the men who forced Edward II to accept the Ordinances, forty-one 'reforms' which severely limited the king's powers. The twentieth Ordinance mandated the third, and perpetual, exile of Piers Gaveston; Edward promised to abide by all the others if only the Ordainers would revoke that one, saying "Whatever has been ordained or decided upon, however much they may redound to my private disadvantage, shall be established at your request and remain in force for ever. But you shall stop persecuting my brother Piers, and allow him to have the earldom of Cornwall." [10] They refused.

Furious and bereft as Edward II certainly was, he kept his feelings under wraps in public and wrote courteously to Thomas's closest adherent Sir Robert Holland on 20 November 1311, just weeks after Piers Gaveston's departure: "We are very joyous and pleased about the good news we have heard concerning the improvement in our dear cousin and faithful subject Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and that he will soon be able to ride in comfort. And we send you word and dearly pray that, as soon as he is comfortable and able to ride without hurt to his body, you should ask him to be so good as to hasten to us at our parliament." [11] Thomas does seem to have been prone to illness, such as the occasion in 1305 when he was unable to travel to Edward, though what this was remains a mystery, and to judge by Edward's letter it sounds as though it may have been some kind of physical disability.

In June 1314, Thomas refused to accompany his cousin to Scotland for the Bannockburn campaign, and sent only four knights and four men-at-armsto fulfil his feudal obligations. Edward's defeat to Robert Bruce put him at Thomas's mercy, and for the next few years the men were joint rulers of England - or, Edward was king in name and Thomas in reality. At a time when England and Wales were suffering from famine, Robert Bruce's brother Edward was invading Ireland and Bruce himself the north of England, and Edward II's subjects were crying out for strong leadership, he and Thomas did their best to thwart each other and were incapable of working together: "Whatever pleases the lord king, the earl’s servants try to upset; and whatever pleases the earl, the king’s servants call treachery…and their lords, by whom the land ought to be defended, are not allowed to rest in harmony." [12]

The Lincoln parliament of early 1316 - at which Thomas of Lancaster finally deigned to show up more than two weeks late - requested of the king’s "dear cousin" that "he might be pleased to be chief of his council, in all the great or weighty matters concerning him [Edward] and his realm," and Thomas, "for the great love which he bears towards his said lord the king," graciously agreed. [13] In fact, Thomas thereafter took little part in government, preferring to stay at his favourite residence of Pontefract, where Edward and his council were forced to communicate and negotiate with him as though he were an independent potentate, or another king. [14] Why Thomas behaved like this is a mystery; perhaps his illness or physical disability prevented him taking a more active role. Edward and Thomas met in York in the summer of 1316 and had a furious row, apparently over Edward's ongoing reluctance to accept the Ordinances, to which Thomas - who saw himself as a second Simon de Montfort - was devoted.

As bad as Edward II and Thomas of Lancaster's relationship had become, it was set to deteriorate even further as the king's new court favourites did their best to hinder a reconciliation - second part of the post coming soon!

Sources

1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1281-1292, p. 243.
2) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 447.
3) Patent Rolls 1281-1292, p. 382.
4) Papal Letters 1342-1362, pp. 346, 357, 543, 545; Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry.
5) Hilda Johnstone, ed., Letters of Edward, Prince of Wales 1304-5, p. 122.
6) J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, pp. 92-93.
7) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 75.
8) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Noel Denholm-Young, p. 8; Andy King, ‘Thomas of Lancaster’s First Quarrel with Edward II’, in Fourteenth-Century England III, ed. Mark Ormrod.
9) The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 192.
10) Vita, pp. 17-20.
11) G.O. Sayles, The Functions of the Medieval Parliament, p. 302.
12) Vita, pp. 75-76.
13) Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson et al.
14) May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399, p. 47.

Update

I'm afraid I don't have a proper blog post to put up yet - the next one will probably, or possibly, be about Edward II's complex relationship with his cousin and enemy Thomas of Lancaster, whenever I get round to writing it - because I've been distracted by reading Seymour Phillips' new biography of Edward, which came out a few days ago. It's a huge, yummy door-stopper of a book, in which "a richer picture emerges, in line with the complexity of events and of the man himself. If Edward II was not a successful king, he was not fundamentally different in many ways from most English monarchs."

I find it pretty gratifying that there's very little about Edward in the book which I don't already know, though I was delighted to see that Professor Phillips has found some new information about the king's mysterious illegitimate son Adam which Professor Blackley back in the 1960s missed, and has demonstrated that Adam did indeed die during the Scottish campaign in the autumn of 1322, as has long been suspected. Adam, who was probably aged somewhere between fifteen and seventeen, was buried in the conventual church of Tynemouth Priory on 30 September 1322, and a silk cloth with gold thread was laid over his body. Professor Phillips also cites a letter sent by an unknown writer that summer which appears to refer to Adam, saying that Edward II has ordered 'the king's son' to join him in York. (Still no known references to the lad before 1322. Puzzling.) As Professor Phillips points out, this might mean Edward's elder legitimate son Edward of Windsor, but young Edward wasn't yet ten and although he was officially summoned to join the army whether he actually went is debatable, and the letter doesn't refer to 'the earl of Chester', Edward's title. The letter also says that "all good qualities and honour are increasing in him," i.e. the king's son. Such a shame that Adam's promising life was cut short, probably by the disease which swept through Edward's army; it would have been fascinating to see what became of him as he grew older. Edward wasn't at Tynemouth on 30 September, unfortunately, having moved on to Barnard Castle, but Isabella of France may have been.

Another post coming soon(ish), and in the meantime, don't forget to drop by and visit my friends Anerje and Edward II's brother-in-law Louis X. Talking of Anerje, I'm currently deep in the grip of an infatuation with the scrummy actor Ben Barnes, which is thanks to her telling me that she thinks Ben, in his role as Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia, looks just like she pictures a young Piers Gaveston. See this pic especially; I caught myself thinking the other day "Sheesh, no wonder Edward loved Piers so much when he looked like that." (Ben looks very young in that pic but is actually in his late twenties.) And check out my Edward II fan page on Facebook, which I'm pretty sure should be visible even if you're not a member there. Edward currently has 171 fans, and it's a rare day that one or two more don't join. By way of comparison, his son Edward III has two fan pages I know of, which currently have 12 and 104 fans, Henry II has 215 (but the page has been up since 2008 and I only set up Edward's a few weeks ago), Henry VI has 14 and Richard III has 746 on one page, 576 on another and 37 on a page called Richard III is Innocent. So Edward's not doing too badly at all! :-)

Saint Isabella The Avenging Angel And The Horrid Husband From Hell

By popular request, here's another snarky, a tad ranty and extremely long, oops, post on the same lines as the last one. (Thank you to Rachel and Anerje for their contributions here.) So...if you want to write a novel about Edward II and Isabella of France, or even just write an online article about them or a review of a book which features them, then please take note of the following points:

- It is an article of faith that anything even slightly negative ever written about Isabella, either in her own time or in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, cannot be trusted or taken seriously because it was written by men. Bonus points for describing medieval chroniclers and modern male historians as 'misogynists' and Isabella as 'wronged'. According to this theory, Isabella never did the slightest thing wrong except commit adultery and find Twu Wuv 4Ever with that audacious studmuffinage* the Manly Mortimer, which by modern standards is cool and sexy and makes her a feminist heroine, and is the only reason why monkish chroniclers and male historians with their sexual prejudices were/are nasty about her. Not because she ever actually did anything wrong. Of course she didn't; only a misogynist with sexual prejudices could think otherwise. [* Rachel's expression, from the comment thread of my last post, which is so brilliant I just had to get it in here.]

- It is also an article of faith that everything negative ever written about Edward II at any point during the last 700 years is completely 100% true and accurate and must go into your novel, even when it can actually be proved not to be true. After all, Edward callously abandoning his weeping pregnant wife to the mercy of the earl of Lancaster (who of course was not in any way her uncle) and the Scots in 1312 makes a much better and more dramatic story than "Sweetheart, I don't want to take the risk that you might miscarry in this small boat that Piers and I are going to sail in on the rough North Sea for five days, so you go to York by land and I'll meet you there in a few days, and here's the money for your travel expenses." A scene where Piers Gaveston flaunts himself in front of his lover's wife wearing her own jewels is far more compelling than the reality of "Dearest Perrot, please store the enclosed jewels and wedding gifts safely in the Tower for me. All my love and can't wait to see you again soon, Ned xoxoxo."

- You should whine as often as possible about poor Isabella being a 'mere pawn' in the hands of powerful men used at a tender age to cement an alliance between countries, as though all other royal women of the Middle Ages married someone of their own choice for love when they were adults. (Edward II himself didn't have the slightest say in who he married either, of course, but it's only ever royal and noble women who are described as 'pawns' or 'chattels' when it comes to arranged marriages.) Why people think that someone like Isabella, daughter of the king of France and the queen of Navarre and a woman with a powerful sense of her own royalty, would ever have wanted to marry anyone except a man who was as royal as she herself was, I can't imagine, but this whole 'pawn' nonsense is a typical example of the unwillingness or refusal these days to see Isabella in the context of her own times and to write her as though she was a time traveller from the twenty-first century with modern notions of sexual equality, marrying for love and having the right to an awesome sex life.

- On the other hand, when Isabella arranges the marriage of her seven-year-old daughter Joan of the Tower to the future David II of Scotland in 1328, Joan is somehow not a 'mere pawn' cementing an alliance at a tender age between two countries but proof of her mother's amazing political astuteness and foresight (see also below). Joan of the Tower's marriage was, historically, a deeply unhappy one; her husband David took many mistresses, one of whom was murdered in 1360 by "certain great men of Scotland" angry at her excessive influence over the king and his infatuation with her - hmmm, does that remind you of anyone? - and eventually Joan returned to England. No-one ever beats their chests, gnashes their teeth and wails about poor little Joan's neglect and mistreatment at her husband's hands the way they do about Isabella's, however, because David's lovers were women and therefore they don't count.

- Isabella was described by various fourteenth-century chroniclers as beautiful and of course everyone knows that she was incredibly, awesomely speshul, which means that her supposed marital suffering is infinitely worse than that of women unfortunate enough to be plain and ordinary. Her daughter Queen Joan was not physically described by any fourteenth-century chroniclers, so modern writers have no idea if she was beautiful or not - though as she was the child of two very good-looking people, I'd say it's pretty likely that she was - and therefore she was considerably less speshul than her mother, another reason why her husband's philandering isn't seen as important.

- Isabella's story has to be forced to fit the popular modern narrative of The Gutsy Victim Survives Adversity And Strikes Back, wherein our brave heroine overcomes some hideous problem like extreme poverty, drug addiction, physical abuse or, in Isabella's case, the appalling suffering inflicted on her by The Most Horrid Cruel Abusive Neglectful Husband In All Recorded History Otherwise Known As King Edward II, and, with the healing power of the Twu Wuv 4Ever she has so fortuitously found with her gorgeous virile stud-muffin boyfriend, becomes a stronger, better and healthier person and/or avenges herself on her abuser. Exaggerate Isabella's 'suffering' as much as you can and ignore all her flaws and the mistakes she made after 1326 because this narrative requires a happy ending, which in this instance means Isabella destroying The Nasty Despensers and the horrid neglectful husband who so singularly failed to appreciate her amazing speshulness, and being incredibly happy and madly in lurrrve with the Manly *coughmarriedcough* Mortimer. The fact that Isabella's story does not actually fit this modern pattern at all is completely irrelevant. (See Susan Higginbotham's excellent post from a while ago, and the comments.)

- When you write the scene of Isabella first seeing her husband in 1308, you must make Edward the epitome of handsome virile manly stud-muffinly goodness. As soon as she learns, however, that he loves Piers Gaveston and that he doesn't, for some odd and completely unacccountable reason, want to jump into the nearest bed with her twelve-year-old self, he immediately becomes weak and womanish.

- You should write Isabella as rebelling against her husband in 1325/27 out of concern for her son's inheritance because Edward II is destroying it, because of course this makes a far more attractive and sympathetic motive than self-interest. This means you will have to ignore the rather inconvenient fact that Isabella herself did a great deal to diminish her son's inheritance by a) signing away most of Gascony to her brother Charles IV in 1327, b) signing away all her son's claims to Scotland in 1328, and c) bankrupting his kingdom by leaving at the time of her downfall in 1330 the not entirely enormous sum of forty-one pounds (yes, 41 pounds!) out of the £60,000 which Edward II had left in his treasury four years before, which doesn't even include the £20,000 given to England in 1328 by Robert Bruce, a few more thousand from the forfeitures of the Despensers and the earl of Arundel, and loans of many thousands more to Isabella and Roger Mortimer from Italian bankers. Also, none of Isabella's actions between 1327 and 1330 indicate that she ever put her son's needs above her own and Mortimer's, and she tolerated Mortimer's disrespectful and discourteous treatment of the young king.

- The fact that Isabella granted herself in early 1327 the largest income that anyone (except kings) received in England during the entire Middle Ages, nearly three times higher than her previous income, over twenty percent more than her enormously, fantastically wealthy uncle Thomas of Lancaster received from his five earldoms, and a third of the entire annual royal revenue, has nothing at all to do with greed but is an entirely justifiable reaction by an amazingly beautiful and speshul royal lady to the terrible, dreadful, unprecedentedly awful and appalling suffering which The Most Horrid Cruel Abusive Neglectful Husband In All Recorded History subjected her to.

- Edward's confiscation of Isabella's lands in September 1324 when he was at war with her brother Charles IV of France is a brilliant opportunity in your novel for lots of pathos and making sure that your reader is 1000% convinced that Isabella is indeed a Tragic Suffering (But Gutsy) Victim. Ignore the fact that Edward granted her an income of over seven pounds a day* for herself and her household - in 1314, the earl of Lancaster reduced Edward's own income to ten pounds a day for a household more than twice the size of Isabella's, and Edward's father in 1305 had reduced his income to a mere five pounds a day - and that he had for the last sixteen years of their marriage paid all her expenses and allowed her to overspend by £10,000 a year. Make out instead that Isabella has to dress in rags and is so impoverished that she might as well go out begging on the street to feed herself and her servants. Also ignore the fact that Our Tragic Suffering Victim was perfectly happy to keep her son Edward III humiliatingly short of money between 1327 and 1330 while she and Mortimer gorged themselves with it. [* Not a pound a day, as some chroniclers thought and some commentators continue to claim.]

- A scene or several where Edward and Hugh Despenser stupidly underestimate Isabella in 1325 and fall into her and Roger Mortimer's oh-so-cunning and clever trap by sending Edward of Windsor to France are compulsory. (Never mind that they didn't.)

- Double standards must abound in your Edward II and Isabella novel, especially relating to sexuality, and here's another exciting opportunity to use them: attitudes to peace treaties with Scotland. Edward II signed a thirteen-year treaty with Robert Bruce in 1323, though continued to refuse to acknowledge Bruce as king or to give up his claims to be overlord of Scotland, which in your novel must make him an incompetent snivelling coward and a betrayer of his brave warrior father's legacy. Isabella and Roger Mortimer signed a permanent peace treaty with Bruce in 1328 in exchange for £20,000, acknowledged him as king and arranged the marriage of her daughter Joan to Bruce's son, which gives you a chance to write Isabella as enlightened, psychically aware of the later existence of the United Kingdom, and a holder of 'War Is Teh Evil!' attitudes 600 years before anyone else.

- Isabella and Mortimer's treaty with Scotland as related in your novel has, of course, nothing at all to do with the fact that Bruce's army invaded the north of England in 1327 and the Mortimer-led campaign against them was a complete disaster which nearly got Edward III captured, and that it thereafter dawned on Mortimer and Isabella that by signing a peace treaty they could a) avoid the expense of future campaigns, b) avoid the humiliation of Mortimer being no more able to defeat Robert Bruce and his allies than That Useless Edward II had been, and c) get pot-loads of money from Bruce which they could keep for themselves rather than pay into her son's treasury. Noooo, of course not. Only a complete cynic not overwhelmed, as any right-thinking person should be, by the amazing romantic wonderful speshulness of Isabella and Mortimer's relationship could think such a thing. And accusing Edward II at his deposition in January 1327 of 'losing Scotland' and then giving up all English claims to the country less than two years later? Not in the least bit hypocritical at all.

- Always judge Edward II by fourteenth-century standards, but Isabella by modern ones. So, for example, the fact that Edward loves men should be written as revolting, perverted, unnatural and sinful, but Isabella's adultery is romantic, sweet, wonderful and entirely forgivable because of her husband's cruel heartless neglect of her and his failure to appreciate her beauty and amazing speshulness.

- Edward II being dominated by his lovers makes him weak, feeble and unmanly, and you should call Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser his "puppetmasters" or similar. For Isabella to be dominated by the Manly Mortimer, however, is sweet and romantic, and yes, you are saying here that it's OK for a woman but not for a man to be dominated by a lover. Accuse male historians and medieval chroniclers of 'misogyny' and sexual double standards while being totally oblivious to your own blatant sexual double standards, then declare that Isabella couldn't help making mistakes and doing things wrong, the poor lamb, because she was so terribly in love with and so infatuated with Mortimer - an attitude which is at least as paternalistic and patronising as the attitudes you're criticising. (In point of fact, it's remarkable how few fourteenth-century chroniclers condemned Isabella for adultery, and most of them weren't even sure what kind of relationship she had with Mortimer anyway, one saying that he was her "chief adviser" and another merely that he was "of her faction." They criticised her, perfectly reasonably, for her and Mortimer's incredible greed during their regency and for running her son's kingdom into the ground. But don't let that stand in the way of a good rant about misogyny and the horrid unfairness of men presuming to judge women's sexuality.)

-Further to the rule in my previous post that Isabella abhors her husband's imprisonment of women and children and that you therefore must not mention her own imprisonment of eighteen children at Chester Castle in 1327, you must not mention her forced veiling of three of Hugh Despenser the Younger's daughters five weeks after their father's execution either. Just say that the girls "became nuns," thus implying that it was their own or their family's choice. Remember that Saint Isabella The Avenging Angel is a strong empowered righteous feminist heroine setting her own and the English people's wrongs to rights, and cannot be seen to take any actions which a reader might consider morally dubious or less than 100% nice and pleasant. (Same applies to the judicial murder of the earl of Kent in 1330, the murder of Edward II, if you choose to go down the route of having him murdered in your novel, and anything else you might deem less than perfect, such as spending every penny in the treasury and then some; these are entirely the fault of the ever-useful scapegoat Roger Mortimer. On the other hand, Isabella is solely responsible for any action the author approves of.)

- From an online review of a book about Edward II and Isabella: "Brought to England at the tender age of 12 to be the bride of Edward II, as a mere pawn in cementing the political alliance between France and England, Isabella was certainly neglected horribly and ill treated by Edward II and his homosexual lovers."

Hmmm, let's change that to feature their daughter Joan, queen of Scotland, shall we, in a statement which would be equally factually correct? "Brought to Scotland at the tender age of 7 to be the bride of David II, as a mere pawn in cementing the political alliance between Scotland and England, Joan was certainly neglected horribly and ill treated by David II and his heterosexual lovers." When we get to a day when someone would actually write something like that, then maybe I'll believe there are no double standards regarding sexuality. In fact, when people ever bewail Queen Joan's unhappy marriage in books and online articles even a fraction as often as they do her mother's, then maybe I'll believe there are no double standards regarding sexuality.

- From another online book review: "Certainly, the story of Isabella and Edward has to be seen as one of the most tragic relationships in English history. Think of the twelve year old girl making her way from France to England. What does she expect? A great and loving husband who would prove himself to be a great king. What did she get? A man who was very much in love with his male favorites, hostile to women, and an idoit [sic] of a king. Tough break from [sic] Isabella. And take the revenge of Edward's favorites against her. First Gaveston, and then Despenser. It is no wonder that she got rid of her husband."

Quite why any royal person of the Middle Ages would have expected a loving husband or wife - they may well have hoped for one, but that's not at all the same thing - I can't imagine, and this statement betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of medieval royal marriage. This lack of awareness that societal and familial norms were different 700 years ago is so all-encompassing when it comes to Edward II and Isabella that it almost seems wilful. The bit about Edward being "hostile to women" is completely untrue and ridiculous; Edward's household accounts demonstrate that he enjoyed the company of women, if perhaps not as much as he enjoyed the company of men. (And so? Does that automatically make him 'hostile' to the female half of the population, or is this just some lame notion that gay men must hate women?) What Piers Gaveston's 'revenge against' Isabella is meant to have been, I have absolutely no idea. And seriously, their marriage was "one of the most tragic relationships in English history"? The mind boggles.

Anyway, let's change the above quote to feature Joan of the Tower and David II: "Certainly, the story of Joan and David has to be seen as one of the most tragic relationships in Scottish history. Think of the seven year old girl making her way from England to Scotland. What does she expect? A great and loving husband who would prove himself to be a great king. What did she get? A man who was very much in love with his female favorites, and an idiot of a king. Tough break for Joan." David II was no more competent than Edward II, and ended up being captured in battle in 1346 and held in custody for eleven years by his brother-in-law Edward III. The amount of hostility aimed at Edward II seems to me to be completely excessive; he's been described in print as "a coward and a trifler," "a weakling and a fool," "a scatter-brained wastrel," "brutal and brainless...incompetent, idle, frivolous and incurious," "a greater ninny never sat on the English throne," and worst of all, "worthy never to have been born." (I think frankly that's an evil thing to say.) Yes, Edward was incompetent and he was deposed for it, but so were other kings, who don't get even a fraction of the abuse thrown at them that Edward does.

I laughed out loud to see that the person who wrote the above review, wailing and gnashing his teeth over Poor Neglected Isabella and her deeply tragic relationship with her horrid neglectful cruel gay husband, has also written a review of a book about Katherine Swynford, long-term mistress and later the third wife of Edward and Isabella's grandson, in which he writes that Swynford "is a very unknown figure of fourteenth century England. But her career is famous. She was the wife of a knight of John of Gaunt, then Gaunt's mistress, and then, amazingly, John's wife and the Duchess of Lancaster. A really fantastic life if you ask me...Katherine's story was a great triumph for a woman of that time. First a wife of a middle class knight, to hated mistress of the Duke of Lancaster, and then to become his wife as well as his Duchess. Incredible story of love, passion, desire, and heroines in medieval England. A compelling read I assure you."

I can't help but notice the lack of any sympathy for or even a passing mention of Constanza, duchess of Lancaster and rightful queen of Castile in her own right, who just happened to be John of Gaunt's wife for almost the entire period that this "incredible story of love, passion, desire, and heroines" was going on. And a woman who has a long-term affair with a married man is a 'heroine' now, is she? In the Support Group for Tragic Queens, Rachel wrote about Katherine Swynford, Isabella of France and Mary Boleyn holding a workshop called Female Empowerment Through Shagging Married Men, and now it seems that the notion is actually being taken seriously. Interestingly, the review doesn't contain the comment "Certainly, the story of Constanza and John has to be seen as one of the most tragic relationships in English history. Think of the seventeen year old girl making her way from Castile to England. What does she expect? A great and loving husband who would prove himself to be a great king. What did she get? A man who was very much in love with his female favourite, hostile to Castilian women, and an idiot of a king." (Seeing as Gaunt called himself king of Castile for many years but never actually managed to make himself king of Castile, that's a reasonable enough comment, no?)

Equally we never get, regarding Roger Mortimer and his wife Joan de Geneville: "Certainly, the story of Joan and Roger has to be seen as one of the most tragic relationships in English history. Think of the woman who supported her husband faithfully for many years and bore him a dozen children. What was her reward? She and three of her sons were imprisoned for more than four years after he rebelled against the king, and three of her daughters were also imprisoned after he fled to the Continent and left his family at the king's mercy. She was then shunted aside and ignored for years on end while he flaunted his relationship with his female favourite."

Is it just me and Rachel who find these double standards absolutely incredible? Isabella of France and Constanza of Castile were very similar: daughters of kings, married at a young age to a powerful man, the king of England or his son, who arrived in England to find that their husband was in love with someone else. This 'someone else' is if female a great romantic figure, but if male, well, not a great romantic figure at all. Let's change the above quote: "Piers Gaveston is an unknown figure of fourteenth-century England. But his career is famous. He was the husband of the king of England's niece, and, amazingly, the king's lover and the earl of Cornwall. A really fantastic life if you ask me...Piers' story was a great triumph for a man of that time...Incredible story of love, passion, desire, and heroes in medieval England." Well, Piers, hot sexy Piers, is my hero anyway, and maybe I really should start calling his relationship with Edward an "incredible story of love, passion, desire, and heroes in medieval England."

- From another online review: "The author quotes from documents such as those at the time which justly condemn Edward II such as the observation by Adam Murimuth that "Edward loved and [sic] evil male sorcerer more than he did his wife, a most handsome lady and a very beautiful woman". Maybe Edward was not judged harshly enough for that!"

Yes, let's harshly judge and condemn Edward II for the heinous crimes of loving a man (the "evil male sorcerer" means Piers Gaveston) and not madly adoring the woman he had to marry for political reasons just because she was beautiful. Oddly enough, nowhere does the reviewer say that we should harshly condemn Roger Mortimer for loving Isabella, assuming he did, while he was married to someone else. A simple oversight, I'm sure.

- And from another review: "...considering the grotesque travesty that Queen Isabella, from the age of 12 onward, had to endure from her "husband"..." How about we change that one to "...considering the grotesque travesty that Joan de Geneville, from 1326 onward, had to endure from her "husband"..."

A friend of mine on Facebook, where we were talking about this, made the point that there is no Hollywood film featuring the unhappy marriage of, say, Joan of the Tower and David II, whereas Braveheart has gone a very long way to popularising the (incorrect) notion that Edward II and Isabella had a disastrous marriage from beginning to end, not to mention the spectacularly silly notion that Edward didn't father Edward III. Likewise, a romance novel of the 1950s which is still extremely popular today, where John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford are the gorgeous and oh-so-in-love hero and heroine and poor Constanza of Castile a background figure who is - poor maligned lady! - smelly because she never washes, has gone a long way to popularising a very romanticised view of Gaunt and Swynford. It's interesting to see how popular culture affects the way we see historical people, such as the bestselling novel and film which have had a major impact on the way many people view Anne Boleyn and her family, and I could write an entire blog post about that. (Also about the way people's reputations swing from one extreme to another over time, Richard III being a prime example, or Isabella, all the way from She-Wolf Of France to Saint Isabella Of Feminism.) There are two biographies of Katherine Swynford, two of Mary Boleyn and countless biographies of other royal mistresses in history - and my goodness, royal mistresses are amazingly popular these days, aren't they - but Edward II's relationships with men are not viewed in this same forgiving romantic light, not even close, and instead we get this endless whining about Poor Neglected Isabella. When I see numerous books, articles and reviews written from the perspective of the queens or noblewomen whose husbands cheated on them with women, condemning the ladies' 'horrible neglect' and describing their marriages as a 'grotesque travesty' rather than making mistresses out to be glamorous, fascinating and sexy, then maybe I'll believe there are no double standards regarding sexuality.

I have to quote part of Rachel's awesome response to the 'tragic relationship' review above: "As for the wailing and gnashing of teeth over poor Isabella being married to Nasty Geigh Edward, let's reverse the situation, shall we? Think of the twenty-four-year-old man, very much in love with someone whom he can't live with because society condemns such relationships (to the extent that people who acted on their attraction for a member of their own sex risked death), forced to marry a pre-pubescent whom he's never met before, for political and dynastic reasons, and then centuries later he's STILL mocked for not immediately falling head over heels for and wanting to leap into the nearest bed with a *twelve* year old."

And regarding the statement that Edward and Isabella's marriage was one of the most tragic relationships in English history, Rachel says "I suspect Katharine of Aragon (discarded after 20 years of marriage and her beloved daughter declared illegitimate), Anne Boleyn (executed on spurious grounds, with HER beloved daughter also declared illegitimate), Arbella Stuart (locked in the Tower by her cousin James I for having the gall to want to marry someone she loved), Berengaria of Navarre (hardly ever SAW her husband - how's that for neglect!), or if we head to the Continent, Catherine de' Medici (humiliated by her new husband, Henri II, who flaunted Diane de Poitiers in front of her and treated her as though she was the real Queen of France), Juana of Castile (shafted by her husband AND father when she tried to claim her birthright), and many other princesses, queens and noblewomen throughout history who were forced to marry men who were violent, abusive, repeatedly unfaithful or just plain hideous, and put up with it, might have something to say about that."

Great examples, and here are some more. Let's think for a moment about Edward II's mother Eleanor of Castile, who married the future Edward I in November 1254 around the time of her thirteenth birthday (he was fifteen). Assuming that she was ready to consummate her marriage a year or two later, so in 1256 or thereabouts, it's odd that her first child wasn't born until about 1262 or perhaps even later. Eleanor was thus at least twenty when she first gave birth, a pretty advanced age by contemporary standards, and given the large number of children she eventually bore, it seems unlikely that her fertility was the issue. So why did it take her so long to become pregnant? Could it be because her husband wasn't sleeping with her and spending much time with her? Seems possible. But have you ever seen Edward I criticised for being a neglectful husband in the early years of his marriage, or Eleanor pitied for being ignored and 'horribly neglected', or described as a 'mere pawn' used at a tender age to cement an alliance between Castile and England? I never have. Edward II's sister Margaret married the future Duke Jan II of Brabant in July 1290 when she was fifteen and he nearly fifteen, but their only child wasn't born until late 1300, ten years later - although Jan didn't deprive himself of female company and fathered four illegitimate sons (brilliantly all called Jan) and an illegitimate daughter. Ever seen Duchess Margaret pitied for her cheating and neglectful husband? Nope, me neither. I still see people commenting on the 'very long' gap between Edward II and Isabella's marriage and the birth of their first child. Given that Isabella was only twelve at marriage, it wasn't a long gap, and as Edward had already fathered an illegitimate son, his relationship with Piers Gaveston is most unlikely to have been the issue.

Let's take a look at some other royal women of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and their marriages. Edward II and Isabella's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, married at the beginning of her teens to a widower twenty-five or thirty years her senior who grew tired of her and tried to repudiate her on the grounds that she had leprosy. Violante of Aragon, married to Edward II's uncle Alfonso X of Castile and so badly treated by her husband that she fled back to Aragon and the protection of her brother Pedro III. Maria of Portugal, married in 1328 to Alfonso XI of Castile who flaunted his passion for his mistress Leonor de Guzman, had ten children with her and allowed her far more power and influence at court than he allowed his abandoned wife. (Maria's father Afonso IV of Portugal invaded Castile to avenge the insult to his daughter; her sixteen-year-old son Pedro the Cruel had Guzman murdered soon after his father's death.) Isabella of France's first cousin Marie of Evreux, whose husband Duke Jan III of Brabant, Edward II's nephew, had something like twenty illegitimate children. Henry of Grosmont's daughter Maud, married to the insane William of Wittelsbach. Henry of Grosmont's wife Isabella Beaumont, forced to tolerate her husband's numerous infidelities with lowborn women, and his cheerfully publicising them in the religious treatise in which he failed to mention her even once. Edward II's niece Alice of Norfolk, beaten up so badly by her husband Edward Montacute that she died of her injuries. Alice's sister Margaret, whose unhappy marriage to John Segrave ended in formal separation in 1344. Isabel Despenser, Edward II's great-niece, whose marriage to the earl of Arundel was annulled and her son bastardised. Margaret Audley, another of Edward's great-nieces, and Alice de Lacy, both abducted from their homes, raped and forced into marriage. Possibly the worst of all, fourteen-year-old Blanche of Bourbon, who married King Pedro the Cruel in 1353, was imprisoned within days of the wedding while Pedro went off with his mistress Maria de Padilla (Constanza of Castile's mother), was held in solitary confinement for eight years then mysteriously died, almost certainly murdered, still only twenty-two and the queen of Castile her subjects never even saw. I'm sure you can think of other examples, and these are all just women more or less contemporary with Edward and Isabella that I thought of off the top of my head. But in Edward II And Isabella Of France Bizarro Fantasy World, none of what I've mentioned here comes even close to the cruelty, neglect and appalling suffering that numerous novelists and commentators claim Edward piled on his poor little tragic queen.